Prior to the COVID-19, I considered Gardasil (for HPV) to be the most dangerous and unjustifiable vaccine on the market. In turn, it’s truly remarkable how many parallels can be found between it and how the COVID-19 vaccines were handled so I feel it’s critically important for this forgotten story to be unearthed.
Help Pay for Vioxx (HPV)
Before there was Gardasil, there was Vioxx,” said Mr. Kennedy after filing a Gardasil lawsuit with Wisner Baum in 2020. “Merck paid billions to settle civil allegations that it purposely hid Vioxx’s cardiovascular risks. The company also paid $950 million in fines as a result of their criminal conduct. When Gardasil came along, the boardroom at Merck joked that its HPV vaccine could ‘Help Pay for Vioxx.’ Sure enough, some of the same shadowy cast of characters who were involved in the Vioxx scandal worked on Gardasil, and they employed the very same methods of manipulating science and obscuring risks as they did with Vioxx. And just as with Vioxx, Gardasil has left a calamitous health disaster in its wake.
The default strategy in Medicine for any type of pain or injury is to throw NSAIDs at it—making the drugs immensely profitable. Unfortunately, they typically don’t help that much (which actually increases their sales since this marginal efficacy results in people perpetually using large amounts of them), and they are fairly dangerous (e.g., NSAIDS kill tens of thousands of Americans each year and seriously injure far more).
Note: a major reason why I’ve been trying to expose the DMSO story is because DMSO can be used in virtually every situation where an NSAID is, but is significantly more effective at treating the problems and unlike the NSAIDs, is not dangerous.
Since one of the most common reasons NSAIDs lead to hospitalization is the drugs causing (sometimes fatal) gastric bleeds, an attempt was made to make NSAIDs less toxic by having them being more selective in what they targeted—which made them less likely to cause gastric bleeding but simultaneously much more likely to cause heart attacks and strokes (and did not change the rates of kidney injuries—another common and serious complication of NSAIDs).
As a result, from the start, evidence began emerging that the COX-2 selective NSAIDs (Merck’s Vioxx—approved in 1999 and Pfizer’s Celebrex—approved in 1998) had a huge stroke and heart attack risk. Yet, all of that evidence was ignored (e.g., Dr. Mercola warned the public about this risk in 1999 and each year thereafter even more evidence accumulated showing Vioxx had the cardiovascular risk).
However, rather than pull the drug, Merck (with the FDA’s complicity) kept on finding ways to cover that data up, and ultimately only withdrew Vioxx in 2004 once so much data had emerged it become impossible to continue covering it up Vioxx was estimated to have killed 120,000 people, while Celebrex (which was never taken off the market) to have killed 75,000.
This sets an important context. First, consider the congressional testimony of the FDA scientist who was largely responsible for getting Vioxx from the market. In it, he notes that the FDA is incredibly resistant to withdrawing bad drugs it approved to the market, and in the case of Vioxx, repeatedly swept evidence of it’s harm under the table and repeatedly silenced agency scientists who tried to warn of its dangers. The most important aspect of this testimony was his conclusion, where he stated it was inevitable future highly dangerous drugs (e.g., those causing blood clots and heart attacks) would also be kept on the market by the FDA.
The second is that a lot of lawsuits were subsequently levied against Merck (ultimately resulting in a 5 billion dollar settlement) which put them in a bit of a pinch where they needed to find a new source of (liability free) revenue.
Note: the year Vioxx was pulled (2004), Merck’s stock dropped by 28% but its CEO nonetheless received a $37.8 million “performance based” bonus.
That solution after decades of work had at last made a long term goal of vaccinologists possible, a vaccine that could prevent human papilloma virus infections—an incredibly lucrative market since 85% of the population gets HPV and it was linked to cancer—thereby making it possible to sell a vaccine against cancer!
Note: there were also decades of failed attempts to make a SARS (coronavirus) vaccine.
In turn, once Gardasil (Merck’s HPV vaccine) was approved in 2006, it was immediately added to the vaccine schedule, and an advertisement blitz was done across America to convince everyone they needed to be scared to death of HPV and needed the vaccine.
This campaign was incredibly effective (e.g., before long, I started encountering many children and parents who were terrified of HPV) and resulted in 25.1% of adolescent girls getting it in 2007, by 2011, 53.8% and by 2023, 79.3%. This was great for Merck, since beyond requiring 2-3 doses, at the time the vaccine was launched, it was the third most expensive vaccine on the market (with the two more expensive ones also being made by Merck).
Lastly, a lot of money was spent on alternative advertising approaches (e.g., the HSS spent 40 million funding grants to come up with research to give doctors talking points and scripts to push more parents to vaccinate). Similarly, many campaign paid girls to get the HPV vaccine (e.g., one targeted women ages 16-18). This is similar to how the HSS paid major media networks hundreds of millions to advertise the COVID vaccines and how an endless number of absurd gimmicks or cash prizes were offered to get the COVID vaccine (which included a few that were so unbelievable I had to compiled them here).
Note: with a current wholesale cost of $307.61 for each injection, the HPV vaccine is now the second most expensive vaccine (with a newer RSV vaccine being number one). Likewise, Gardasil’s sales continue to grow, and in 2023, at 1.87 billion in total revenue, it was Merck’s second highest selling pharmaceutical (with the number one spot going to a cancer drug). Because of it’s high cost, it frequently required state or federal financial support for doctors to offer it (not unlike what happened with the COVID vaccines).
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